It would be so very entertaining if it were not so frightening
‘I’M looking at Wisconsin, chucklecheeks.’ ‘And I am looking at a mound of unwashed dishes. Are we going on a holiday?’ ‘Not to Wisconsin, anyway. I was thinking more of Baltimore.’ ‘Baltimore! I had best check my passport is in date.’ ‘Not that Baltimore. You won’t need a visa for West Cork.’ ‘So why are you peering so intently at that computer screen and telling me that you are looking at Wisconsin?’
Why indeed? Good question - as all the best interviewees say when hit with a line of interrogation that was not quite expected.
In answering this good question, I go back to the teenaged Medders, a young fella who loved his news. This adolescent current affairs aficionado knew the name and portfolio of every Cabinet Minister who entered Leinster House.
He was up to date from afar with the latest atrocity in the Troubles and with the rise of the yen against the dollar. He was on top of every development of note from Newfoundland in Canada to Oldcastle in Cavan. If RTE or the ‘Evening Herald’ or Radio Tirana thought a story was worth reporting then he wanted to know about it.
The pattern was set for decades of being a news junkie, abreast of the latest from Number 10, Birmingham Six, Three Degrees, Heinz 57, whatever. Looking back now at fifty years or so of keeping tabs on the world from Dungarvan to Djibouti, from Fianna Fáil in Mayo to Frelimo in Mozambique, it was all a tad indiscriminate.
With no filter fitted, the teenaged Medders with his insatiable thirst for information grew up to be a befuddled middle-aged Medders, someone who knew a little about a lot. As news media proliferated he was left with a bewildering breadth of knowledge and no way of joining up the random dots.
Then along came Brexit, a riveting blend of the important and the amusing. It was vital to us here in Ireland yet it seemed to be happening to someone else. The UK for a couple of years offered a fascinating watch to an outsider looking in as an internal wrangle in the Conservative party was foisted on the population at large.
Instead of feeding on stories from all corners of the globe, the news junkie narrowed his focus down to the one big story. But Brexit the car-crash spectacle cooled when Boris – call him Boris the Brilliant or Boris the Bullshitter as you prefer – took command and the gripping, breathless nature of the drama faded. It was time to find another one big story on which to concentrate, migrating to the far side of the Atlantic and Donald Trump’s re-election campaign.
So that is why I am looking at Wisconsin. And Florida. And Arizona. I presume that it’s not just me and surely everyone is looking at Pennsylvania.
In Ireland, our perspective on United States politics has been coloured Democratic since John Kennedy became president in 1961, so we are not automatic Republican Trumpites. In Ireland, the word ‘president’ conjures up someone who will represent our nation with dignity, with propriety and with intellectual integrity.
It is hard to imagine Ireland electing a president as coarse in his attitude to women as Donald Trump or whose casino company was fined millions for defying money laundering controls. But they have different perspective on such things in the US, a country I have never visited. I am happy to remain at home and catch up with the latest by podcast or newspaper or radio.
If Brexit was soap opera, then this election is ‘Die Hard’ blockbuster in its anarchy and awfulness with the current incumbent tearing up every rulebook with his schoolyard taunts and his subversive lack of ideology. There’s so much to explore. Will the ethnic Cuban vote go to the Republicans? Will Georgia opt for Biden? Will New Hampshire swing to Trump? Will both candidates live long enough to voting day on November 3? Will all postal ballots be counted? Will white supremacists start a civil war? None of those questions is posed in jest.
America appraoching decision day is an appallingly divided spectacle. The nation is riven by irreconcilable differences on health care, climate change, Covid-19, the Middle East, gun control, the role of government. It would be all be so frightfully entertaining if it were not so frightfully frightening.